AN IMMEDIATE OPPORTUNITY FOR AN ENDURING LEGACY: IMPROVING AMERICAN HEALTH BY INCREASING PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

Transcription

1 AN IMMEDIATE OPPORTUNITY FOR AN ENDURING LEGACY: IMPROVING AMERICAN HEALTH BY INCREASING PHYSICAL ACTIVITY October 28, 2016 Mr. Donald J. Trump Chairman, President, and CEO c/o The Trump Organization 725 5th Ave New York, NY To the next President of the United States: As our next President, your focus will be on many important issues and goals during your tenure. Most important, you will be charged with ensuring that all Americans have an equal opportunity to live a long, healthy, and fulfilling lives. As you set your priorities for your administration, we strongly urge you to put our nation s physical inactivity crisis at the top of your list. Physical inactivity is now the fourth leading cause of preventable death worldwide. The Lancet has formally labeled physical inactivity a pandemic due to its widespread and rapidly growing impact on health, economies, and quality of life, and has called for global action. If we can get Americans to move more, we will save lives, protect families from the costs, pain and sorrow of dealing with easily preventable diseases, and make American employers and the U.S. overall much more productive and successful. Sedentary behavior is a major public health problem, and due to its high prevalence, may be of the same order of magnitude as tobacco use and unhealthy diets; however it receives comparatively little federal investment. A significant federal investment in actions to promote physical activity and physical fitness, combined with a coordinated effort among federal agencies, would improve population health, reduce suffering from chronic disease, reverse soaring medical costs, improve labor productivity and military readiness, and increase our children s academic performance in schools. Research has shown that better physical fitness in middle-aged adults helps reduce health care costs as they became older by almost 40%. Systematic reviews show that many interventions to increase physical activity are cost-effective, and are often on par with pharmaceutical interventions, especially if they involve brief exercise advice on prescription with multiple means of delivery using current technologies. Specifically, we ask for $120 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to implement a comprehensive physical activity framework, led by the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity (DNPAO). DNPAO will be able to fund national partners, states, and communities across the nation to get millions of Americans to move more. The physical activity framework would be the first national, coordinated, comprehensive framework to increase physical activity. It would require a massive effort most appropriately coordinated by the federal government to provide a foundation for a comprehensive approach to increase physical activity among Americans. Specifically, the framework would: Mobilize physical activity partners by leveraging existing resources and coordinating activities across sectors to create and sustain a national movement Train leaders for action to be strategists and mobilizers in communities using evidence-based strategies to promote physical activity while supporting action institutes across sectors Evaluate the effective key communication components to message active lifestyles and launch a national media campaign

2 Deliver physical activity programs that work to adopt and implement policy, support communities, and implement community-oriented strategies Report technologies, tools and data that matter to address inadequacies in physical activity monitoring and evaluation, identify key metrics of success, upgrade CDC surveillance and develop rapid implementation evaluation of policy, systems, and environmental strategies. This dedicated funding for physical activity should be a new investment in the health of Americans and should not be pulled from any other CDC programs. We ask you to make this part of your budget with an increased commitment to prevention. Our national statistics on physical activity are alarming and call for an urgent response. Despite the known benefits of physical activity, one in three adults are active for less than 10 minutes/week. Furthermore, half of U.S. adults and three in four adolescents do not meet minimum recommended levels of aerobic physical activity for good health. If every American met the levels of recommended physical activity, we would save money and lives: $117 billion per year in health care costs and 250,000 premature deaths. Inactivity is also a threat to our military readiness. Twenty-seven percent of young Americans are too overweight or physically unfit to join the military. Many are turned away by recruiters and others never try to join. Of those who attempt to join, many potential recruits fail their entrance physicals every year because they are physically unfit. Reversing the crisis will lead to improvements in our nation s health and economy. If Americans meet recommended levels of physical activity: 1 in 10 premature deaths would be prevented 1 in 8 cases of breast and of colon cancers would be prevented 1 in 12 cases of type 2 diabetes would be averted 1 in 15 cases of heart disease could be avoided More Americans would be physically able to join the military Now is the right time to develop a comprehensive program to promote physical activity in this country. Within the CDC and across other government agencies, DNPAO staff currently provide expert assistance, research and consultation about the best programmatic and policy approaches to create healthier built environments and evidence-based programs that often produce a return on investment. We have a national consensus on how to reverse the crisis. Now is the time for DNPAO to take the lead on implementing a physical activity framework to mobilize partners, train leaders, create a social movement, improve surveillance, and fund states for programs, system, and environmental change. We have a strong network of motivated partners to support change from all sectors: public health, active living, transportation, parks, disease prevention and control, education, and sports. We ask for a serious commitment of resources to a serious health crisis facing our nation. We greatly appreciate your consideration of our request to make a commitment to helping our population move more, coordinating efforts across the federal agencies, and committing $120 million to increase physical activity funding at the CDC. We look forward to talking with you and your team more about this in the coming months. Sincerely,

3 4j School District, Safe Routes to School A World Fit for Kids Adaptive Sports USA Allan Ekberg, Mayor, City of Tukwila, Washington State America Walks American Academy of Pediatrics American Association on Health and Disability American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network American College of Sports Medicine American Council on Exercise American Heart Association American Hiking Society American Institute for Cancer Research American Public Health Association American School Health Association (ASHA) Association of State Public Health Nutritionists (ASPHN) Bike Austin Boys & Girls Clubs of America Brown Local Schools CA4Health California Public Health Association-North (CPHA-N) Campaign to End Obesity Action Fund Canyon County Safe Routes to School CATCH: Coordinated Approach to Child Health CDOT - Chattanooga Department of Transportation ChangeLab Solutions Chico Velo Cycling City of Cape Canaveral, Cape Canaveral, Florida City of Takoma Park Safe Routes to School Coalition for Asian American Children and Families Coalition for the Registration of Exercise Professionals

4 Cuyahoga County Board of Health Dero Detroit Greenways Coalition Directors of Health Promotion and Education (DHPE) EAGLE College Prep Elementary East Bay Regional Park District Fairbanks Cycle Club FlagHouse FOCUSED FITNESS Fredericksburg Area Metropolitan Planning Organization Girls on the Run (GOTR) Greater Richmond Fit4Kids Health By Design HealthMPowers, Inc HealthPartners Institute for Education and Research Healthways International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association J&B Importers, Inc. Kansas Department of Transportation Kauai Path, Inc. KC Healthy Kids KiDZ Neuroscience Center: WalkSafe & BikeSafe Programs Lake Hood Elementary School Anchorage Alaska Lakeshore Foundation League of American Bicyclists. Leopold Elementary School (Madison Metropolitan School District) LiveWell Lawrence, Lawrence, Kansas Maryland State Advisory Council on Physical Fitness Mason Square Health Task Force Mayor Johnny L. DuPree, City of Hattiesburg, MS Mayor Julie Masters, City of Dickinson

5 Mercy Medical Center NAACP Napa County Health and Human Services Agency Napa County Office of Education National Academy of Kinesiology National Association for Health and Fitness National Association of Chronic Disease Directors (NACDD) National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioner National Athletic Trainers' Association National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity National Complete Streets Coalition National Council of Youth Sports (NCYS National Council on Strength and Fitness National Physical Activity Plan Alliance National Recreation and Park Association National Recreation and Park Association National WIC Association New Jersey Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (NJAHPERD) New Jersey Bike & Walk Coalition NIRSA: Leaders in Collegiate Recreation Ohio Public Health Association. Ohio State University College of Nursing Oklahoma Department of Transportation Partnership for a Healthy Lincoln Peaks to Plains Design, PC Pennsylvania State University Department of Kinesiology PeopleForBikes PONY Baseball/Softball Prevention Institute Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association Prince George's County Parks and Recreation Foundation

6 PS 84 PTA - Lillian Weber School for the Arts Rails to Trails RideWise TMA RiverStone Health Road Runners Club of America Rollerblade USA Safe Routes to School National Partnership Shawano County UW-Extension Sierra Club Skagit Healthy Communities, Mount Vernon, WA Skillastics Smart Growth America South Carolina Alliance of YMCAs Sport & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) St Joseph Health, St Jude Medical Center Sumner M. Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness Milken Institute School of Public Health The George Washington University The National Foundation on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition Trailsnet.com University of Maryland (Department of Kinesiology) University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Vision Zero Network Walk San Francisco WALKSacramento West Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission Whole Vision LLC YMCA of the USA Young People's Healthy Heart Program, Mercy Hospital Youth Basketball of America